Man guilty of raping WCU student

WEST CHESTER -- A Common Pleas Court jury found a Lancaster County man guilty of raping a West Chester University student in her borough home after he mistakenly stumbled into her house.

The attorney for Leonard Anglade, 26, of Hanover had argued in his summation to the jury on Wednesday that it was “physically impossible” for the assault on the woman to have occurred in they way she testified it had, and that her credibility was at issue because she did not appear to have reacted as he said she should have to Anglade’s alleged sexual assault.

“I think you would have had to fight back,” said defense attorney J. Scott Kramer of the victim’s reaction. “But she didn’t do anything.”

Kramer’s argument suggested that the woman had fabricated the story about being forced to perform oral sex on a stranger who wandered into her house while she was asleep.

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But Assistant District Attorney Thomas Ost-Prisco, who prosecuted the case during the three-day-long trial before Senior Judge Ronald Nagle, told the panel that it was illogical to assume the woman would have put herself through the embarrassment and humiliation she endured in the wake of the assault if it had not actually occurred.

“This was every woman’s worst nightmare,” Ost-Prisco said in his closing argument. “Why would anybody relive that over and over again?”

The jury deliberated about 5˝ hours before returning to find Anglade guilty of rape by forcible compulsion, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sexual assault, and criminal trespass. It found him not guilty of aggravated indecent assault.

Anglade had pleaded no contest to charges and accepted a proposed sentence of 51 to 201 months in state prison in the case earlier this year but withdrew his plea in July in order to take his case to trial and assert his innocence. He was taken into custody by Chester County sheriff deputies when Nagle revoked his bail after the verdict was delivered. He will face sentencing at a later date.

Ost-Prisco on Thursday declined to comment on what sentence his office would seek in the matter. He said, however, that he had delivered news of the verdict to the victim whose name is being withheld by the Daily Local News due to the nature of the charges.

“I spoke to the young lady and she is very pleased with the verdict,” he said.

Anglade was arrested by West Chester police in the early morning hours of Sept. 30, 2011. Officers had been called to the house on East Nields Street for the report of a strange man inside the house. When officers approached Anglade, he told them, “I’m drunk and I’m at the wrong house,”

The case was an unusual one in that Anglade, a West Chester University graduate and Comcast cable employee, had no criminal record of any kind, did not know the woman involved, and had never met her in any social setting before the night of the event. He began drinking at a West Chester bar earlier in the evening, and apparently became disoriented enough that he could not remember large stretches of the night.

According to testimony at the trial, the woman – a 21-year-old university student from Lancaster County – was asleep on a sofa in the living room of a house she shared with another woman. Her basement bedroom had been damaged by flooding in a recent storm.

Testimony showed that Anglade came into the house through an unlocked door, unaware of where he was. He saw the woman asleep and approached her. When she woke up, she saw Anglade and ran toward the basement. But Anglade blocked her on a staircase, held her against a wall, and forced her to perform oral sex on him, she testified.

The assault was broken up when the boyfriend of the victim’s roommate came into the house and saw what was happening.

In his closing, Kramer told the jury that Anglade had indeed been in the house without permission. “But Leonard Anglade is innocent of any of the sexual charges,” he said. “It did not happen the way the Commonwealth alleges.” He said it would not have been possible for the woman to have been forced to perform oral sex on Anglade on the steps of the basement because he was too far above her.

Ost-Prisco countered that although Anglade likely had not intended to commit any crimes that night, he nevertheless did when he saw the woman lying prone on the sofa. “He’s got a few drinks in him, and he’s got some courage. So he takes advantage of her.”